6A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 2003
Groups seek smallpox vaccination delay
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Citing safety concerns, the nation's two largest health care unions want a delay in smallpox vaccinations. But the Bush administration said yesterday it would move ahead as planned, with inoculations to begin next week.
The unions argued that there are not enough safeguards in place to make sure people at higher risk of injury are not vaccinated. And they complain there is nothing in place to adequately compensate people who are hurt by the vaccine.
"Health care workers across the country want to be prepared if a smallpox outbreak occurs," Andrew L. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 750,000 health care workers, wrote President Bush yesterday.
"But it is wrong to ask them, their patients and their families to put their health at risk while you have been unwilling to make the plan as safe as possible."
Similar concerns were registered by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 350.000 health care workers.
Today, the Institute of Medicine plans to release a report advising the administration on implementation of its plan. When they met last month, several members of that panel, mostly academics from schools of medicine and public health, were also critical of the Bush plan, fearing it was being put in place too quickly.
Despite the critiques, the administration is ready to move ahead, said Jerry Hauer, assistant secretary for public health preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services.
He said the administration was working to address the unions' concerns, though he dismissed the Institute of Medicine as one of many voices. "I didn't pay much attention to the IOM's comments on this." Hauer said in an interview yesterday.
The IOM report was commis
"We just want to be sure workers don't come up on the short end of the stick,"
Barbara Coufal
AFSCME
slonied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which said it needed advice in implementing the vaccination plan.
When he announced the vaccination plan, Bush said it was needed to steal the nation against a bioterror attack, though he said there is no imminent threat that smallpox, last seen in 1977, will return.
The first wave of vaccinations are recommended, though not required, for health care workers and people on special smallpox response teams — those most likely to encounter a contagious patient.
Because it is so risky, the vaccine is not recommended for the general public.
Experts estimate that between
15 and 43 out of every million people being vaccinated for the first time will face serious complications, and one or two will die.
The vaccine is particularly risky for pregnant women and those with a history of skin problems or compromised immune systems, including people with HIV, cancer and organ transplant recipients.
The government plans to carefully screen people so no one in these groups is vaccinated. But the unions fear the screenings will not be adequate, particularly given that most states are in financial crises and there is no federal money designated to run the smallpox programs.
"We just want to be sure workers don't come up on the short end of the stick," said Barbara Coufal of AFSCME.
She said that one of the union's largest locals, in Philadelphia, voted not to participate in the program until issues of screening and compensation for people who are injured are worked out.
Relatives of sniper victims file suit
The Associated Press
SEATTLE — Relatives of two Washington, D.C.-area sniper victims yesterday sued a gun manufacturer and store linked to the Bushmaster XM15 assault rifle used in the deadly attacks.
The family members of James "Sonny" Buchanan and Conrad Johnson claim the gunmaker and store showed "gross negligence" that caused injuries and death, according to the complaint. The relatives are represented by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
The case, filed in Pierce County
Superior Court in Tacoma, seeks unspecified damages. It names Bull's Eye Shooter Supply of Tacoma, which either sold the rifle or lost it in a theft; store owners Brian Borgelt and Charles Carr; Bushmaster Firearms Inc. of Windham, Maine; and snipier defendants John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo.
The lawsuit alleges that at least 238 guns, including the assault rifle, disappeared from the gun shop in the last three years. Despite audits by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms showing Bull's Eye had dozens of missing guns, Bushmaster continued to use the shop as a dealer the lawsuit alleges.
The Bull's Eye owners didn't return phone calls for comment. Allen Faraday, vice president of administration for Bushmaster, said the company did nothing wrong and that it sold the rifle legally to a firearms dealer.
The plaintiffs' attorney, Paul Luvera, said in a statement that the rifle was used in the sniper attacks less than three months after Bull's Eye received it in its store.
Muhammad and Malvo are accused of killing 13 people and wounding five others in Alabama,
Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland. Virginia and Washington, D.C. They are being tried first in Virginia in separate cases, and both face the death penalty.
Investigators are trying to determine how exactly Muhammad and Malvo wound up with the rifle.
Buchanan, 39, was killed Oct. 3 while mowing grass at a car dealership near White Flint Mall; Johnson, 35, a bus driver, was killed on Oct. 22 in Aspen Hill, Md.
Buchanan's sister, Vickie Snyder of Rockville, Md., said she hopes that, ultimately, there will be more control over who obtains firearms.
Bush speaks about malpractice reform
The Associated Press
SCRANTON, Pa. President Bush said yesterday the amount that injured patients can win from their doctors must be limited.
In the 18th trip he has made to politically important Pennsylvania since his inauguration, Bush called on Congress to quickly deliver on medical malpractice reform to address high insurance costs for doctors.
The president argued that "frivolous and junk lawsuits" are the primary cause of health care costs rising faster than in a decade and doctor shortages that leave patients without care.
"The problem of those unnecessary costs isn't in the waiting room, or the operating room — they're in the courtroom." Bush said in a speech at the University of Scranton in northeastern Pennsylvania. "Everybody's suing, it seems like."
Cappingjuryawards in medical malpractice suits is the answer, the president said. "We need reform all across America and we need a law coming out of the United States Congress," Bush said.
Beforehand, Bush met in private with doctors and officials at Scranton's Mercy Hospital. The hospital is affiliated with a nearby hospital that this week settled a medical malpractice case for $7 million and apologized to the widow who sued over her husband's death.
Any proposal for tort reform cranks up fierce lobbying, and Democrats backed by trial lawyers were aggressively promoting their side more than a day ahead. Interest groups
planned protests, with one holding a sign aloft reading "Protect Children, Not Eli Lilly."
Pennsylvania's Democratic Gov-elect Ed Rendell scheduled a news conference shortly after Bush's appearance.
During last year's campaign season, Bush frequently raised the issue as one he could solve if voters handed him a completely Republican-controlled Congress, which they did.
Bush could also wield the issue in any 2004 run against Sen. John Edwards, a hopeful for the Democratic presidential nomination and a lawyer who made millions trying personal injury lawsuits before he came to Washington. Bush made his last major speech on the matter in Edwards' home state of North Carolina.
Physicians complain that skyrrocketing insurance rates are driving them to close or scale back their practices. That leaves patients confronting doctor shortages or rising health care costs in many communities.
In New Jersey, doctors are planning a partial work stoppage next month to protest soaring malpractice premiums. Surgeons at several West Virginia hospitals walked off the job in protest Jan. 1, but most have returned as a reform bill moves through the state legislature.
In Pennsylvania, scores of hospitals earlier this month narrowly dodged a mass walkout by doctors protesting high insurance costs, which more than doubled last year to as high as $200,000 for some physicians.